Notes and reviews

literate; and for having trained hundreds of young rural community leaders at both the national and subregional levels.

Telimele Regional Centre for Improving the Status of Women, Guinea, for having made literacy work a part of economic development by organizing literacy courses for women and girls and, thereby, improving the production and marketing of agricultural produce and favouring the development of craft activities in the region; for having trained newly literate people as mass-education teachers; and for having actively involved the people concerned in the literacy work.

Seva Mandir (a centre for the development of adult education), Udaipur, India, for having organized and carried out literacy projects for farmers in tribal regions~ young school drop-outs, and villagers and women of modest means; for having established a vast network of rural libraries with reading materials for the newly literate and semi-literate, reading rooms and a mobile home-delivery system; and for having disseminated, through its Publications Department, a monthly bulletin in the local language and a quarterly in Hindi.

General Union of Women of Yemen, People's Demo- cratic Republic of Yemen, nominated by the Women's International Democratic Federation, for having

reached a large number of women and girls; for having used the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic as a basis for vocational training and encouraged artistic and cultural activities connected with work; and for the value of its achievements as a national example.

The jury expressed the hope that all governments, Unesco, the other organizations of the United Nations family, intergoverumental, regional and bilateral as- sistance institutions and non-governmental bodies will make a greater effort to identify literacy works deserving of reward.

It urgently invited the governments and organiz- ations concerned to take exceptional steps to join the support of public opinion, at national and world level, for the fight against illiteracy, and to increase the exchanges between those engaged in it.

Finally, it emphasized the need for a massive mo- bilization of human, financial and material resources on a par with this major task of our century, the resources available so far having proved insufficient to provide every man and woman with the minimum of education to which they are entitled, in accordance with the appeal launched by the General Conference of Unesco at its nineteenth session to intensify the struggle against illiteracy.

Book rev iews

A v iew of early childhood education in the U.S.S.R. through some recent books

The nursery school is the first element in the general system of education in the Soviet Union. I t must be emphasized that it is one of the most crucial elements because early childhood is such an important period in the mental development of the individual. Numer- ous studies in educational psychology have established that the rate of mental development in pre-school children is very high in relation to older children. Thus, errors which are committed during the edu- cation of pre-school children cannot be rectified at a later stage.

The problem of the all-round development of pre-school children is approached by Soviet scientists on the basis of the Marxist-Leninist theory which

598

considers the mental development of a child as the result of the assimilation of the social experience of mankind. In his pre-school years, a child assimi- lates the simpler aspects of this experience, using the objects around him, acquiring elementary know- ledge and skills, and grasping certain moral and aesthetic norms. This assimilation of knowledge and skills can occur in random fashion, in the course of the child's daily life and his contact with adults, and also in the course of purposeful instruction in the nursery school. Numerous studies in educational psychology have shown that organized instructions produces very substantial improvements in the child's mental development.

Notes and reviews

An important role in the evolution of the theory of Soviet pre-primary teaching has been played by the work of the well-known Soviet educationist A. P. Usova, who has worked out the content and methods for a programme of education which takes into account the general pat tern of child develop- ment. The content of the course is defined in a 'nursery-school education programme'. This reorgan- ization of teaching has led to a significant rise in the level of children's overall development.

The ideas of A. P. Usova have been further developed in the work of the Soviet educationists N. P. Sakulin, N. A. Vetlugin, V. N. Avanesov, N. N. Poddyakov and others.

In recent years, scientists have been particularly interested in the study of problems of educational psy- chology concerned with the sensory and mental devel- opment and training of children in the pre-school age group. Whe shall now examine some of these studies.

The book The Genesis of Sensory Aptitudes z is a collection of papers, edited by L. A. Venger, which describe the results of studies carried out by a group of workers in the Laboratory of the Psychology and Physiology of Early Childhood of the Scientific Research Inst i tute for Pre-School Education, Acad- emy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R. This work is an extension of the previous studies made in the laboratory on the general characteristics of the development of perception in children from bi r th to the age of 7. A theory of the development of per- ception has arisen out of this work and has been used to produce a detailed analysis of the develop- ment of particular aspects of perception which mani- fest themselves as specific aptitudes in the fields of music and art, such as the feeling for rhy thm in music and art , the perception of proport ion and of the changes in the shape and size of objects due to perspective, the kinaesthetic perception of the par- ameters of one's own movements as expressed in the control of one's hands in the act of drawing.

The researchers have concentrated on the possi- bility of purposeful development of aptitudes. In contrast to the overwhelming majority of studies on problems related to aptitudes, which at tempt to reveal already established abilities and to observe the changes which take place with age or under various kinds of educational influence~ the authors of this book study the very earliest stages in the formation of the corresponding qualities. T he fact that these studies were conducted on pre-school children whose abilities were either non-existent or existed only in an embryonic state meant that it was possible in the fullest sense of the word to 'develop' them, to carry out developmental research showing how aptitudes are first formed.

The findings showed that each of the aptitudes studied represents a specific operation of perception. The analysis of the structure of this operation makes it possible to develop the relevant aptitude in any normal child.

In discussing their data, the authors come to several general conclusions about the genesis of both sensory and other types of aptitude. They throw a new light on the basic theoretical aspects of the prob- lem of apt i tudes-- the criteria for the separation and differentiation of aptitudes, the relationship between aptitudes and knowledge and skills, the reasons for individual differences in aptitudes, and the relation- ship between the development of general and specific aptitudes.

The practical importance of the research described in this book is that it raises the question of how to increase the effect of pre-school ed acation on develop- ment and how to introduce content and methods which are directed towards the purposeful develop- ment of children's aptitudes.

The collection of papers edited by N. N. Pod- dyakov and entitled The Mental Training of the Pre-school Child 2 presents and analyses a large quanti ty of experimental and theoretical material which makes it possible to map out new approaches to the problem of the mental t raining of pre-school children. The papers published in this reader have a common methodological basis and discuss the de- velopment of the subject matter and methods of nursery-school teaching. The book uses and analyses a wide range of theoretical and experimental studies which have been carried out in recent years in the field of early childhood education and psychology.

T h e authors pay special at tention to laying the theoretical foundations for new principles for the selection and systematization of the subject matter of pre-school education and to the results following from the application of these principles to the design of content and methods for mental t raining in pre- school institutions. According to these principles, it is important to select as the central element in the systematization of pre-school knowledge about some area of reality (animate or inammate nature, social phenomena, etc.) the kind of basic relationships which children can grasp by means of their visual- operational or visual-image modes of thinking. T h e general idea tha t the external structure of an animal's body depends on the conditions under which it lives

z. Genezis Sensornyh Sposobnostej, Moscow, Pedagogika, I976.

2. Umstvennoe Vospitanie Do~kol' nika, Moscow, Pedago- gika~ I972.

5 9 9

Notes and reviews

was, for example, used as a basis for the systematiz- ation of pre-school knowledge about living things. In the children's constructional activity, use was made of the fundamental idea that the structures which they make from building blocks or other components will depend on the conditions under which they are to be used.

These new principles of systematization can be used to develop a basically new content for a mental training programme, and correspondingly new methods for teaching this material to children.

The book by N. N. Poddyakov, Thought Processes of the Pre-sehool Child, t deals with the question of the development of pre-conceptual forms of thought in pre-school children. The work describes the principal results of the experimental and theoretical studies which the author has made over a number of years.

Poddyakov develops the idea that a special role in the mental progress of a child is played by pre- conceptual forms of thought: evisual-operational' and Cvisual-image' thought. These have their specific functions in the overall mental development of pre- school children and are of great importance in the formation of a number of aptitudes which evolve throughout the life of an individual. Visual- operational and visual-image thinking in pre-school children function in close connection with each other, thus enabling the children to make important gener- alizations and creating a basis for the assimilation of more complex forms of conceptual material.

The book Diagnosis of the Alental Development of Preschool Childrenfl edited by L. A. Venger, is the result of many years of work in the Laboratory of the Psychology and Physiology of Early Childhood, Scien- title Research Institute for Pre-School Education, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The laboratory has developed a system of methods of diagnosis aimed at establishing the level of mental development in children from three to five years old. Unlike non-Soviet specialists in the field of psycho- logical diagnosis who attempt to find methods of determining a child's r without reference to his living and educational conditions, the authors of the present book consider mental development as a process which is organically related to education and instruction, and regard psychological diagnosis mainly as an instrument for determining the effect which they produce.

In developing their methods of diagnosis, the authors started out from a qualitative approach to diagnosis--its orientation towards the identification of meaningful indicators of mental development and the allowance which it makes for the ways in which children perform diagnostic tests. The statistical approach was also used, for example, in the quanti-

600

tative evaluation of the successfulness of the solutions and the calculation of indicators for the discrimi- nation, reliability and validity of the methods.

The book sets out the underlying principles for a system of indicators of mental development in children. These have been derived from a concept which has become established in Soviet child psy- chology and which sees mental development essen- tially as the successive assimilation of different types of mental operation (perceptual and intellectual), the aim of the methods used being precisely to reveal the degree to which the principal types of operation have been assimilated.

An appendix to the book contains material for the investigation of mental development and instructions and tables for evaluating the results. The book can therefore serve as a handbook of psychological diagnosis. As the authors point out, the proper use of the proposed methods can only be ensured if the tests are performed in the presence and under the guidance of a specialized psychologist.

The book by A. M. Leushina entitled The For- mar ion of Elementary Mathematical Ideas in Pre-

school Children ~ makes a significant contribution to the problem of mental training in the nursery school. The book makes use of the results of the latest studies in educational psychology relating to the development of mathematical skills of pre-school children. The author has worked out a programme of mathematical knowledge and skills to provide for the overall mental development of children as well as for the development of their mathematical aptitudes.

In outlining the range of mathematical knowledge which nursery-school children should acquire, A. M. Leushina singles out as her starting point the knowledge of sets. She gives a detailed analysis of the ways in which this knowledge may be acquired by pre-school children of various ages and describes the teaching methods which are most effective in enabling children to assimilate the material being taught. Thus, the author emphasizes the necessity of developing in young children the idea of a set as a structurally inte- gral unit inside which they must be able to see each member of the set. The assimilation by children of knowledge about sets lays the foundation for the sub- sequent study of arithmetic.

Methodological hints are given in the book for organizing the instruction of children of all pre-school

I. My~lenie Do~kol'nika, Moscow, Pedagogika, 1977. 2. Diagnostika UmstVennogo Raz~itija Do~kol' niko~,

Moscow, Pedagogika, I977. 3. Formifovanie ~lememarnyh Matemati~eskih Pmdsta~-

lenij u detej Do~kol'nogo Vozrasta~ Moscow, Prosve]- genie, I974-

Notes and reviews

ages in elementary mathematical knowledge and skills. Very important factors in the problem of pre-school

education are the development of speech and the learning of the mother tongue: correct pronunciation, the learning of new words, grammatical improve- ments in the spoken language, the development of connected speech and instruction in story telling. A special and important part of speech work in the nur- sery school is the teaching of reading and writing habits (particularly reading to older children).

The book Development of Speech in Pre-school Chil- dren 1 edited by F. A. Sokhin and written by members of staff of the Institute for Pre-School Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and the Departments of Pre-School Education of the Moscow and Leningrad Institutes of Education, sets out the main methodological principles of speech de- velopment in pre-school children in nursery schools and gives methodological recommendations and instructions to teachers. The authors base their work on recent educational, psychological and psycho- linguistic studies, relate children's acquisition of the mother tongue and the development of speech to their mental development and emphasize in particular the importance of acquainting children with the formal and semantic aspects of speech and language.

The problem of teaching pre-school children to read forms the subject of the book Reading and Writing in the Nursery School ~ by L. E. Zhurova. The author bases her ideas on the theoretical principles worked out by Professor D. B. Elkonin (Correspond- ing Member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R.), who defines reading as the process of reconstructing the sound form of a word from its graphic model (letter composition). Thus the first and fundamental task in teaching children to read is not to establish relations between sounds and letters (as is presupposed by all the traditional methods) but to reveal the phonemic composition of the word and to define the sequence of sounds in it. This approach not only makes it possible to develop reading skills suc- cessfully but also orientates children towards the pho- nemic system of the language. The author gives a detailed description of the method she has evolved for teaching pre-school children to read.

The collection of papers Artistic Creation and the Childfl edited by N. A. Vetlngina, deals with the prob- lem of guiding the artistic and creative aptitudes of children in the spheres of music, art and literature. The book is the result of a series of studies carried out by the Laboratory for Aesthetic TrMning in the Scientific Research Institute for Pre-School Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R.

The hypothesis from which the authors proceed is that as soon as children show a desire for various kinds of activity, it fs essential to provide them with the artistic skills which are the essential prerequisite for artistic creation.

Special attention is paid in the book to the relation- ship between teaching and creation, their interdepen- dence and their differences and, correspondingly, to the relationship between methods of teaching the dif- ferent forms of artistic activity and of guiding the creative proclivities of children and developing their creative aptitudes.

The book presents information about the content of programmes of creative exercises used in art, music and speech activities. It shows the ways in which works of art can be used to develop a child's creativity and explains the correlation between imitation and cre- ation. In accordance with the hypothesis mentioned above, the authors have attempted, in determining the programme of creative exercises, to stimulate children to create artistic images by systematically showing them the significance of the various media of artistic expression.

The overall conclusion of the studies presented in this book is to prove the validity of combining in- struction with a system of exercises directed towards developing the artistic skills of children in order to foster incipient creative aptitudes. The book also raises the question of the individual approach to children in the guidance of their artistic proclivities and suggests that consideration should be given to the idea of the children being grouped according to their interests and the level of their ability.

We have given a short account of a number of studies in which pre-school education is discussed in close relation to the general problems of the psycho- logical development of children. These works are but a small part of a wide range of studies which are currently providing the basis for a substantial im- provement in the effectiveness of education in nursery schools.

LEONm ABRAMOVICH VENGER and NIKOLAY PODDYAKOV, heads of laboratories at the Scientific Research Institute for Pre-School Education, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the U.S.S.R.

i. Razvitie Re~i Detej Do~kol'nogo Vozrasta, Moscow, Prosve~enie, 1976.

2. Gramota v Detskom Sadu, Moscow, Pedagogika, I974. 3. Hudo~estvennoe Tvor~estvo i Reb~nok, Moscow, Pedago-

gika, i972.

60I

Notes and reviews

Nancy Parkinson, Educational Aid and National Dawlopment, An International Comparison of the Past and Recommendations for the Future, London, The Macmillan Press; r976, 4 r r p.

The book is a collective work of a team of writers who have, under the general guidance of the principal author, examined the contribution of external assist- ance to educational development in Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, India, Turkey and Chile. The writers have also reviewed briefly the stated policies, procedures and record of external assistance by France, the Fed- eral Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America and have included a sketchy description of develop- ment assistance by the Uni ted Nations family of organizations and some other international organiz- ations (such as the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Deveolpment (OECD), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Common- wealth Secretariat). The book ends with a chapter of general conclusions and recommendations which summarizes the salient points made in the earlier chapters.

The six country reports (Kenya by Mustafa Tuqan, Senegal by Adri Kater, Tunisia by Robin Ostle, India by L. S. Chandrakant with assistance from Muriel ~gasi and K. Rangachari, Turkey by Paul Stifling, and Chile by Harold Blakemore) constitute the sub- stance of the book and are both interesting and in- formative. Following a common outline, each report provides a general historical and socio-economic background of the country, a sketch of the edu- cational situation, a brief account of total foreign aid received for educational development, description of selected proiects benefiting from foreign assistance, the writer 's own judgement about the performance of the projects, and a general assessment of the role played by foreign aid in the country's educational progress.

Considerable educational progress can be recorded for the decade of the z96os in each country. Enrol- ments at various levels have increased spectacularly in some cases, new types of educational institutions and programs have been established and many kinds of high-level specialized manpower are being pro- duced in all of the countries. At the same time, the litany of complaints about the educational systems has remained unchanged: large proportions of children and youth still unserved by education, growing press- ure on successively higher levels of formal education, high unemployment among the educated, unequal distribution of educational opportunities, poor qual- ity of instruction and its lack of relevance to the student 's environment and life prospects, and the

6 0 2

increasingly heavy burden of education on the government budget.

The role of foreign assistance in respect of both the main achievements and the central problems of the educational system has been, on the whole, marginal in terms of funds, technical assistance and ideas, though in many specific projects foreign assistance certainly has been the dominant factor. Even in these specific cases, the more 'successful' ones have had strong indigenous inputs in both ideas and resources.

Foreign aid in education, therefore, has a limited capacity for good or evil. The basic problem of edu- cational development is not how much aid is avail- able, how it is administered, and what terms and conditions are laid down, but whether the host government has been able to pu t its own house in some order regarding the national development goals and priorities and whether the nation has the deter- ruination to resolve the socio-economic contradictions arising from the legacy of a colonial and feudal past. The recipient country has to discover and shape a model for national development which meets the basic human needs of all the people, makes the best use of the nation's resources and potential and ensures just sharing of the benefits of development. Once some progress is made in this effort, it might be dis- covered that it is feasible to offer a certain level of basic education to all citizens, that there are alterna- tive ways of meeting high-level specialized manpower needs other than the prototypes of higher education institutions in industrial countries, and that the usual educational ideas and models available from the in- dustrial countries have only limited applicability in the developing countries.

A part of the problem is that the policy-makers and managers of education and the negotiators of foreign assistance, themselves being the products of the conventional educational system and forming the ranks of the relatively privileged in a socio-economic structure propped up by the existing educational sys- tem, do not as a group have the intellectual vision or the inclination to forge ahead in new directions.

Professor Blakemore writes in the report on Chile (P. 339) :

The situation facing Chilean education in the early z96os was not, then, simply a matter of devoting more resources to correcting deficiencies of both a quantitative and quali- tative kind; it was no less a question of devising appropriate machinery for creating an educational system which, from top to bottom, woul~ be more appropriate for a modern,

Notes and reviews

developing democratic state~ than the existing outdated~ regressive and socially divisive structure which was increas- ingly unrelated to Chilean reality.

On the contrary~ the problem with the Chilean edu- cational system was that it faithfully reflected the Chilean reality! The educational system in any country can hardly avoid reflecting the reality of the existing power structure.

Given this general context in most of the Third World countries, it is not surprising that there is often a scramble for any form of external assistance; there is an uncritical acceptance of foreign advice~ experts~ equipment, programme designs, and funds; and careers are made and performances are rated on the basis of how much aid is attracted and negotiated.

Foreign assistance never comes as pure financial and technical resources to be put to the best use as seen fit by the recipient government. I t is always accompanied by particular perceptions, assumptions, attitudes, values, and preferred solutions embodied in the project design, the equipment and materials, the training programmes, and the particular technical ad- visers selected. It takes a high level of self-confidence, a clear sense of purpose and direction, and well- articulated policies and programmes for self-reliant development on the part of the host government to per- mit a synergistic integration of the external inputs into the national development process and to prevent the reinforcement of values and norms inconsistent with national needs, misallocation of national resources, and the continuation of a dependency relationship. A fundamental irony of foreign assistance is that those who are in most need of it can use it least effectively.

Even those aid-supported projects regarded as relatively successfulwsuch as the Indian institutes of technology, training of technical teachers in India, Haceteppe University in Turkey, and INACAP in Chile---can be considered successful only within the limited frame of reference of the projects themselves. They have been successful in terms of what they have set out to do. In each case, legitimate questions can be raised about the basic rationale and assumptions of the project and the propriety of the approach in relation to the overall development needs of the country. For instance, it can be asked if there were in the case of India other ways of developing special- ized technologies than the formal institutional ap- proach with wholesale importation of technical staff, equipment and educational models. (An alternative might have been the applied research and develop- ment approach combined with on-the-job training in close collaboration with public and private sector industries making efficient use of the considerable scientific and technical manpower pool India already possessed.) A prior question might have been: Would

India have been better off to lay much greater stress on agricultural and rural development, creating a firm base for sustained and self-reliant development, than to emphasize industrial growth during the early decades of her independence?

Questions can be raised about the relative effective- ness of the institutional training approach (in contrast to an approach combining apprenticeship, on-the- job trainings and short-duration, flexible institutional training that shifts the major burden of appropriate skill development to the employers) for middle-level skill training followed by the industrial training insti- tutes and polytechnics in India and (at least partially) by the INACAP in Chile. Shnilarly, in the case of Haceteppe University in Turkey, one wonders if it was necessary or appropriate to send all professional staff abroad for training and whether the sophisticated facilities and the products of these facilities were the most suitable ones for improving the health and well- being of the Turkish masses.

It would be presumptuous, even with the benefit of hindsight, to suggest that the right course of action in each instance was beyond doubt and the course followed was invariably wrong. But it is clear that there are alternatives, the consideration of which are foreclosed by the national dec/sion-makers' incli- nation to adopt the conventional pattern inspired by familiar Western examples--a tendency strongly re- inforced by external assistance.

These uncomfortable thoughts are only hinted at here and there in the country reports. The conclusions in each country report and the general conclusions in the final chapter deal mostly with operational prob- lems of organizing training programmes~ recruiting experts, arranging language instruction, co-ordinating aid and so on within the existing framework of national development policies and the role of external aid. In doing so, the book concentrates mainly on bilateral assistance, touching only lightly the policies, mode of operation, and projects of the major inter- national donors--the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The emergence of the World Bank in the I97OS as the single largest external donor in many sectors, including education, along with its relatively large professional staff, elaborate project identification and appraisal procedures and a conscious effort to develop and pursue a strategy for development assistance (note the sector policy papers and the voluminous country economic reports and sector reviews) signals a new chapter in external assistance for national devel- opment, with various implications for national pol- icies and appropriate national responses. Within the United Nations family, UNDP's co-ordinating role and country programming exercises represent an

603

Notes and reviews

effort to integrate external assistance with national goals and prograrnmes. On the whole, in recent years, multilateral assistance has grown in volume and significance--a t rend bound to continue and intensify in the context of the debates on the New Inter- national Economic Order. But these developments have been too recent to be included in the book. A reader will still find the book, particularly the country

reports, profitable reading if he is willing to draw his own conclusions and lessons from the account given for the half dozen countries.

MANZ00R AHMED International Council for Educational Development, Essex, Connecticut (United States)

Bt~rje Holmberg, Distance Education, A Survey and Bibliography, London, Kogan Page; New York, N.Y., Nichols Publishing Company, r977, r67 p.

I t is evident that interest in distance-education methods amongst educational planners, economists and researchers has increased enormously in the last few years. The reasons for this increasing interest are many. Research over the last decade or so into, for example, individualized instruction, educational broadcasting and group study methods has had a profound influence on the design of new and inno- vative distance-education institutions which bear little resemblance to the more traditional correspon- dence colleges. The success of some of these insti- tutions in terms of the quality of their teaching and their cost effectivenessmthe British Open University is a case in poin t - -has contributed to the establish- ment of committees and working groups on open and distance education in almost every Ministry of Edu- cation in the world. Th e potential contribution of distance education in developing countries, in in- creasing educational output at reduced recurrent and capital cost levels, is enormous.

In the reviewer's experience, over the last few years, of meeting and working with planners and educators from over thirty different countries interested in the potential of distance-education systems, there is a real need for both introductory and specialist publi- cations in this field. This is true regardless of the teaching objectives and target audiences of the system envisaged, which may range from degree-level studies for school-leavers to functional-education programmes for dispersed rural populations. Three areas in par- ticuiar come to mind where the need for information seems most acute: The relative costs of distance and open-education

systems compared with more conventional sys- tems, the nature of these costs (e.g. course-based, student-based, fixed costs) and factors which in- fluence them.

The various possible organizational frameworks and administrative subsystems suitable for distance education projects.

The procurement, adaptation, and creation of learn-

ing materials, and associated physical production and distribution methods.

Holmberg's book unfortunately says next to nothing about the economics of distance-education methods. The chapter on organization, administration and planning is three pages long, whilst that on course creation contains only nine pages. Little is said about physical production and distribution of materials. Other important aspects are also given fairly summary treatment (e.g. a chapter of three and a half pages on evaluation).

The cursory nature of the text would matter less had the book included an annotated guide m the bibliography (the latter takes up nearly one-half of the book's I67 pages). References are given at the end of each chapter, bu t with hardly any guidance as to the scope, level and content of the different items. For example, the references in the chapter on evaluation list seminal theoretical and research works like those of Scriven~ Bloom, and Gagn6 alongside minor articles and descriptive notes of a few pages' length. There are also some strange omis- sions in the bibl iography--for example, one of the most recent comprehensive works on distance/open educationmOpgn Learning, by MacKenzie, Scupham and Postgate--is not mentioned. These factors would not be a problem for somebody already reasonably familiar with the field, but the text itself is obviously intended as a br ief introduction and overview for newcomers. However, such readers would need to have access to a large specialist library, and a lot of t ime to spare, to get maximum value from this publication.

The book tries hard, in a limited number of pages, to do two very different things: introduce new readers to the field of distance education, and provide a guide to an extensive specialist literature. Unfor tu- nately, it does not totally succeed on either count.

ANTHONY KAYB Assistant Director Open University Consultancy Service

604

Notes and reviews

George Sullivan (ed.), A Reason to Read: A Report on an International Symposium on the Promotion of the Reading Habit, Paris, Unesco, r976.

The issue of reading motivation is of vast importance. I t touches virtually every nation.

The book in question contains a report on the different possibilities of promoting the reading habit. The work is of particular importance for all those who are active in the field of reading instruction. The report starts by showing the importance of and the reason for reading (Why read?), and suggests many measures that can be taken for its enforcement. The chapter on practical problems touches on ques- tions which are of interest to anyone working in this field: education for reading, availability of reading materials, the effects of non-print media.

Following this are 'recommendations' as to how one can help to alleviate or solve the problems that occur in many countries. With reference to research some of these recommendations are:

Literacy and reading programmes should be examined and evaluated in terms of the effectiveness of their approaches to reading promotion.

Comparative studies should be undertaken in order to define the problems and current solutions in co-ordinating extracurricular reading with formal education.

Drop-outs from special reading programmes of all types (ranging from formal school to adult literacy programmes) should be studied in order to determine why people drop out, and how their initial expectations relate to their actual experience.

In contrast to drop-outs, the reading habits of those who successfully complete various reading programmes, of both

a formal and a non-formal nature, should be recorded, analysed and compared.

Non-reading literates and lapsed literates should be studied to ascertain why they do not read.

Studies should be made of how people's reading needs and interests change throughout their lives.

Unesco and other international organizations should make every possible attempt to encourage the study of reading motivation. These groups should also use every possible means to disseminate the results of such studies to government officials, educational administrators, teachers, parents, librarians, publishers, writers, and those involved in special reading programmes.

The appendix, with the help of 'case studies', pro- vides the reader with an insight into the reality and the practical side of the book-work. Iran and Malaysia are quoted as examples.

A comprehensive list of persons who concern them- selves with the problems of reading instruction and literature for young people, and an extensive cata- logue of "microfiche collections' complete the report.

The sharing of experiences is particularly signifi- cant in times like these, where international co- operation is so very important for the education of young people. In this sense this book can be recommended to any reader who may be interested.

RICHARD BAMBHRGER Director, International Institute for Children's Literature and Reading Research

Some recent Unesco publications

Moving Towards Change (Arabic version) Some thoughts on the new international economic order 139 p. 1976 (ISBN 92-3-6o1365-1) Also published in English, French, Russian and Spanish r2 F

Youth Institutions and Services: Present State and Development (Educational Studies and Documents, 23) 5I p., tables r977 (!SBN 92-3-~oI398-X) A/ready published in French and Spanish 8 F

6o5